Thursday, July 24, 2014

Burn Notice, Season 3, Episode 11

We get to meet Gilroy this episode (the British assassin, who Michael refers to as a psychopath), he appears to have taken over from Strickler as the Big Bad.

He apparently worked for Strickler and Michael's killing of the man hasn't done him a lot of favours. Michael claims that he killed Strickler because he didn't want a middle man. Gilroy reminded me of a rogue James Bond actually, although he does one thing Bond doesn't, he uses other people. To underline how much he knows and how Michael can never know exactly what he's going to do or who to, he has a hidden sniper take a shot at Fiona, who has eyes on the meeting between Michael and Gilroy.

I always saw this sort of thing as a weakness. Unless you have allies like Fiona and Sam, who do what they do for Michael out of friendship/love/loyalty, then you're vulnerable. Gilroy doesn't strike me as the type who has friends, so finding who he's using could give you significant leverage against him and even the fight up to a one on one.

Sam's moving out of Maddie's place to move in with Mrs Reynolds and her daughter Miss Reynolds. Apparently either Sam is a phenomenal lover or Miss Reynolds is very forgiving, because everyone thought his bridges were burned there after Michael sent the Buick to it's death from a rooftop car park.

Maddie tells Sam that someone has arrived for him, an old friend. Sam walks in, sees the guy and slugs him in the face. His name is Mack and they have a history. Sam was close mouthed about what it was, saying it was personal, but even if I hadn't seen the episode before I still would have guessed it had to do with a woman. In this case it was Sam's wife, who also later left Mack. It seemed a little at odds with what Sam told Fiona about his wife, who he never divorced, so I'm wondering if she married Mack and thus committed bigamy, or maybe this is a different wife? I'm not sure if he's been married more than once, although if he has that also seems against odds with the story he told Fiona when Veronica wanted to get married to him.

Those things aside Mack is working in conjunction with the police locating kids, mostly they're the subject of custody disputes and he's now after a nasty piece of work, a Latino predator called Rincon. He can't get close to the guy and he's hoping Sam and his associates can. Exactly how he tracked down Sam is also never explained, it's rather like how people just know where Michael is living when it's convenient for the plot.

To get to Rincon, who has hidden in the barrio, they need the cooperation of a local gang banger, Omar. Omar is a gangster, but he tries to do what he can for the neighbourhood. He's not willing to help 'gringos' like Mack, Sam and Fiona, so Michael dons a bright red suit and adopts his best Clint Eastwood Man Without a Name impersonation to intimidate them into cooperating. They made a joke out of every time he snapped his fingers something exploded.

This brought him into conflict with Vargas (cult hero Danny Trejo playing a latino gangster, colour me surprised there!). Rincon and Vargas were working together and he was protecting Rincon. That was until Michael Westen and Co teamed up with Omar. They took Rincon into custody and chased Vargas out, thus reclaiming their neighbourhood.

Progress was made on the Gilroy front too, with Gilroy observing Michael at work with Omar and deciding that he is the type of person he wants to work with.